Obama and Gillards New Year resolutions. (Hope eternal)

The tasks ahead for Obama and Gillard.

The only way out, it seems, would be for Obama to go hard on the Gun toting and bullet lobbing pro-kill-‘m Senators and NRA by saying ; Either do away with your lethal guns voluntary or, I’ll resign and let the nation make this choice for once and all. We go for another election with a change of the second amendment of the constitution. The second amendment has been given so many different interpretations; surely they can find one that will support changing this ‘bearing of arms” by all and sundry.

When the Amendment was first passed in law back in 1791 by James Madison guns were just guns which took time to load and fire, giving a fair chance of survival, while in 2012 guns are killers by just looking at them. The founding fathers then sought to place trust in the power of ordered liberty of democratic government versus the anarchy of insurrectionists. Today, the cult by the manically adherence of the right to bear arms by the individualist has usurped the insurrectionist.

The issues in Australia are not less problematic by our obsessing with asylum seekers. How fortunate or unfortunate that we have islands that we can ship them to. Those poor European countries are being entered by refugees on trains, boats, swimming ,walking and heaven knows what else, even in containers, ’refugees sans frontiers’, they could be called. They enter by the tens of thousands, weekly. There are very few isolated European islands that boat people can be isolated on and forgotten about. The obstinacy by our politicians on having blown this up by the hysterical ‘border protection’ mantra is now costing hundreds of millions for just a few thousand.

At least most European countries have been canny enough that the might of the millions of refugees from war torn countries is best handled by, at least making the best of a bad thing, and treat them humanely and, after due process, let them work and pay tax. Howard’s refrain of “we will choose who come here and the method by which they come” could not possibly work there.

Neither does it work here. They come, no matter what obstacles are put into place, not even the risk of getting smashed against rocks deters the helpless refugee. They have nothing to lose. Some of the boat-people haters say, they are filthy rich which seems odd; why risk getting smashed onto rocks or drown from leaky unseaworthy boats?

I feel sorry for Chris Bowen. He tries to be, unconvincingly, unyieldingly hard like the rest, steely and feigning resentment against those more humane. His heart isn’t in it. Hopefully his wife will whisper kind words when he is tossing and turning during guilt ridden sleepless nights. He looks quickly sideways whenever he has to give an expected heartless comment about ‘deterrent’ or ‘no advantage’ to journalists. A shocking portfolio.

The opposition has no such trouble; full blown hatred against refugees comes fluently natural and so does their concrete determination to do all in their power drunkenness to show, and straight into the camera, unflinchingly, as much empathy as the ‘arbeit macht frei’ consortium some seventy years ago at Auschwitz.

Morrison’s, C. Pine’s and Abbott’s public resentment against refugees is genuine and without artifice. They all seem to have ‘against everything’ in their genes. The headmasters must have given them more than just the strap on their backsides.

Julia will have to consider, after getting re-elected and with a mandate, change our position, process all boat people on-shore, give them permission to work and pay tax. This world is different now. We can’t forever thump our noses at the most unfortunate and UNHCR.